Friday, October 26, 2007

This is why I called my piece on Muslims attitudes toward antiquities, "At War With Reality." Islam is built upon a fantasy history and thus actual history inevitably refutes it, so history is a threat to Islam.. Also see Ibn Warraq's piece this month where he discusses evidence that the Koran developed over centuries and was edited and re-edited several times, contrary to the Muslim contention of its uncreated, perfect and eternal nature.

Jerusalem Post (h/t DW): The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

"There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Sabri rejected Judaism's claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."